Engineering Newswire: The Army’s New Glow-in-the-Dark Bullets

Today on engineering newswire, we’re shrinking power inverters for a chance to win a million dollars, firing glow in the dark bullets, and creating power with industry by-products. This episode features:

Little Box Challenge

Want to win one million dollars? All you need is a little box. Well ... you have to find an innovative way to shrink power inverters to something less than the size of a small laptop.

The challenge is a collaboration between Google and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Applicants contemplating competing need to sign up by September 30, 2014.

The Army’s New Glow-in-the-Dark Bullets

Dubbed, One-Way Luminescence, or OWL, a new tracer round is being developed by engineers at the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center

The engineers are experimenting with a variety of potential solutions, but final design is expected to be confirmed in 2017, when it will then transition to an Engineering and Manufacturing Development program.

Industry By-Products Create Power

The VTT Technical Research Institute in Finland has developed a pilot-scale power plant based on fuel cells that use by-product hydrogen from the process industry.

The 50 kW, pilot-sized plant runs at an efficiency of 44 percent, but when this technology is scaled to commercial size, it will enable the reduction of energy consumption of the electrolysis process used for sodium chlorate production by 10–20%.